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  "Not to all of us, Major," said Skoyles.

  Featherstone laughed. "I'll not let you put me out of countenance," he said, punching him playfully in the chest. "Not today of all days. Come, let's go and put on a show for Gentleman Johnny. He's deservedly in command now."

  "We can at least agree on that."

  "You'll notice the difference now that the general is back to set the tone. We'll be able to get down to some serious tippling again."

  "Private Higgs might find that rather ironic," said Skoyles.

  "Forget him," advised the other with a companionable chuckle. "You're one of us now, Jamie. Enjoy the privileges of officer life. Damn it all! Isn't that why you joined the army? It was certainly what tempted me into uniform—that, and the pleasure of reminding inferior nations why Britain is supreme on the field of battle."

  The army was hamstrung by unnecessary delays. Even though he knew that an invasion would inevitably take place, Sir Guy Carleton had made little preparation for it. Burgoyne did not hurry him. After his arrival in Montreal, he waited two whole weeks before he wrote to Carleton about his transport requirements. There was no sense of urgency. A humane, experienced, conscientious soldier-politician, the governor was deeply wounded when he first learned that he had been superseded. Nevertheless, he behaved toward Burgoyne with perfect decorum, concealing his outrage and offering whatever assistance was needed, making it clear, however, that as long as the army was in Canada, he still outranked the General.

  While the troops remained in Montreal, the governor held a ball in honor of the new commander, one last glittering social occasion before the important business of war was resumed. The venue was Chateau Ramezay, the magnificent residence built at the start of the century by former governor, Claude Ramezay, who wanted to be reminded of the castles of his native Normandy. It was a high stone structure with a series of dormers set into its copper roof. All of its rooms were exquisite and well proportioned with elaborate carved paneling by a French architect as the distinguishing feature of the Nantes Salon. Standing on the Rue Notre-Dame, the chateau had formal gardens to the side and to the rear.

  Captain Jamie Skoyles was among the first to arrive. He knew the building well, having been part of the army that had expelled the rebels from the city in the previous spring. Punch was being served, but Skoyles took care not to have too much of it. He needed to keep his wits about him for the main business of the evening, which was to revel in female company. Skoyles had always had an eye for the ladies, and his elevation to officer rank had certainly aided his pursuit of pleasure. Canada had been an education for him. During a dalliance with some of its pretty demoiselles, he had greatly improved his command of French.

  As the room slowly began to fill, the orchestra played a medley of English and French melodies. Skoyles watched from a quiet corner. A few of the officers were traveling with their wives, but it was members of the civil administration, and notably the Canadian families, who provided most of the feminine interest. Skoyles was soon reminded how large the average Canadian family could be. One middle-aged couple swept into the room with no fewer than five attractive young daughters in tow as well as four sons. Skoyles admired the French fashions of the Canadian women though he was less enamored of their powdered and ornamented coiffures. They looked too artificial to him.

  He was still surveying the room when he heard a nervous voice.

  "I find them so intimidating," Charles Westbourne confessed.

  "Who?" asked Skoyles, turning to him.

  "The fairer sex."

  "You'll soon learn to conquer that fear, Lieutenant."

  "I doubt it."

  "Women were put on this earth for our delight."

  "Then why do they always unnerve me so?"

  Lieutenant Charles Westbourne was a plump, fresh-faced young man in his twenties, relatively new to the regiment and still—an incongruity in a British army—obviously in possession of his virginity. There was no hope of his losing it at the ball. Skoyles could see the glass of punch trembling in his hand and the first beads of perspiration on his brow. Unlike some of his fellow officers, however, he did not mock Westbourne. He tried to protect him from the scorn of the others, and an unlikely friendship had grown up between them as a result.

  "What are we supposed to do, Captain?"

  "Dance with them, of course."

  A note of panic sounded. "Dance? I don't know how!"

  "What better time to learn?" observed Skoyles. "Make the most of it while you can. Before too long, we'll be dodging enemy fire."

  "I think I'd prefer that to dancing with a woman."

  "Coward!"

  "They all look so unapproachable to me."

  "An optical illusion."

  "How does one get to meet them?"

  Skoyles grinned. "Watch me," he said. "I'll show you."

  Putting his glass on a table, he adjusted his uniform and pulled himself up to his full height before striding purposefully across the floor. General Burgoyne had just entered the room with a group that included a young lady who caught Skoyles's attention at once. Pale and slender, she had a radiance that set her immediately apart from all the other women. Her auburn hair was brushed up on her head into an oval shape with a series of curls trailing artfully down. She was wearing a beautiful blue silk dress with a hooped skirt and a wide décolletage, partially covered by a chiffon bow but still advertising the full breasts. Even at first glance, Skoyles noted a strange mixture of vulnerability and self-possession about her.

  Seeing him approach, General Burgoyne gave him a warm smile.

  "There you are, Skoyles," he said. "Have you heard the news?"

  "What news, sir?"

  "I thought I'd arrived in Canada with a secret plan of action, yet I find a paper circulating in Montreal that contains infernally accurate details of my strategy. How on earth could that happen?"

  "There are spies everywhere, General."

  "They'll hang from the tallest tree when I catch up with them!" He turned to his companions. "You all know Captain Skoyles, don't you?"

  "Yes," said Brigadier General Simon Fraser. "One of my best men."

  "Thank you, sir," said Skoyles.

  Anxious to be introduced to the only woman in the group, Skoyles had first to exchange greetings with Simon Fraser, Major General William Phillips, the renowned artilleryman, Adjutant General Major Robert Kingston, Major John Dyke Acland, and Major Alexander Lindsay, the Earl of Balcarres. Including the general, there were three members of Parliament in the group. Clearly, the young lady moved in exalted company, all of them wearing powdered wigs and sporting their epaulets.

  "Let me introduce our charming young guest," said Burgoyne, beaming at her. "Miss Elizabeth Rainham." She gave a polite smile. "Miss Rainham, this is Captain Skoyles of the 24th Foot."

  "Delighted to make your acquaintance," said Skoyles, inclining his head in a token bow.

  "Thank you, Captain," she said.

  "Are you a resident of Montreal?"

  "Oh, no. I only arrived in the city this morning."

  "Why don't you find Miss Rainham a glass of punch, Skoyles?" suggested Burgoyne. "Then she can tell you what she's doing here—apart from lighting up the room with her beauty, that is."

  She laughed softly. "You flatter me, General."

  "A feat well beyond my competence."

  "And mine," added Skoyles with an admiring smile.

  "Be careful, Miss Rainham," Burgoyne warned her genially. "Whatever you do, don't let Skoyles lure you to the card table. I speak from bitter experience. He has the luck of the devil."

  "I can vouch for that," said Balcarres. "I'm another of his victims."

  "Is that true, Captain?" she asked.

  "Not entirely." Skoyles intercepted a passing waiter to take two glasses of punch from his tray. He handed one to Elizabeth before raising the other in tribute to her. "Your good health, Miss Rainham!"

  "Thank you."

  Sipping their drinks, they moved a
side from the others and took a moment to weigh each other up. She looked at Skoyles through large, intelligent, curious blue eyes.

  "The general did not mention your Christian name," she noted.

  "It's Jamie."

  "Short for James?"

  "No, Miss Rainham," he explained. "Jamie, as in Jamie. My mother was Scots. I was named after her grandfather."

  "Yet you don't have a Scots accent."

  "My father was English. I was born and brought up in Cumberland." He took another sip of punch. "But you sound more like a southerner to me. Surrey, perhaps? Sussex?"

  "Kent, actually. We have a home near Canterbury."

  "What brought you to this part of the world?"

  "A ship," she said, grimacing. "A small and extremely smelly frigate. I can't say that I took any pleasure from the voyage, Captain. It was a nightmare. But," she went on, bravely, "that's all behind me. I can start to enjoy myself now."

  "Enjoy yourself?"

  "I'll be traveling with the army."

  Skoyles was taken aback. "I can't guarantee much enjoyment for you in that, Miss Rainham. It promises to be a testing campaign."

  "Not according to General Burgoyne," she said brightly. "He's a family friend of ours and he assures me that there'll be no real danger. Why should there be?" she asked, hunching her shoulders. "He'll be leading an army of professional soldiers against a disorganized rabble of amateurs. There can only be one result."

  "I hope that you're right," said Skoyles, worried by her optimism, "but it would be foolish to underestimate our enemy. When we fought against them last year at Valcour Island, they gave a good account of themselves. We lost several men."

  "I'm not frightened by the sight of blood, Captain Skoyles."

  "Just as well. You'll see lots of it."

  "Are you trying to scare me off?"

  "Not at all," he said. "It's just that I don't think that life in the shadow of Canterbury cathedral will have prepared you for the ugliness of what might lie ahead."

  "I'm treating it all as an adventure."

  "Adventures can have unseen hazards."

  "That's what makes it all so thrilling."

  "There's nothing thrilling in the sight of dead bodies," he said. "Or in seeing your men sustain horrific injuries. This is not a cricket match on the village green, Miss Rainham."

  "Please!" she said, her cheeks coloring slightly. "Stop treating me like a child. It may interest you to know that my father fought alongside General Burgoyne in Portugal. I also have a brother in the Horse Guards. So you see, I do have some insight into army life."

  He was blunt. "I doubt that."

  "Why do you take such pleasure in vexing me?"

  "I don't, Miss Rainham. I just feel that you should be warned."

  Skoyles was torn between desire and anxiety. If she accompanied the army on its journey south, he might have the chance to improve his acquaintance with her. Nothing would please him more. On the other hand, he knew that she would be come face to face with the more hideous aspects of warfare and he wanted to save her from that. There was another consideration. Skoyles had experienced the climate in the Hudson Valley at that time of the year. He would hate to see that delicate complexion of hers ruined by the hot sun.

  Elizabeth was brusque. "Unlike you, I have total confidence in General Burgoyne."

  "We all do, Miss Rainham."

  "No, Captain," she said, crisply. "I sense a flicker of doubt. You are not as certain of victory as you should be. Fortunately, that's not an attitude shared by my future husband."

  Skoyles was checked. "You're betrothed?"

  "What else would bring me all this way in the such discomfort? It was not to have my upbringing derided by you, I can assure you. Only the compulsion to be with my beloved could have got me to Canada. In fact, I reached Montreal somewhat earlier than expected so I'll be able to surprise him." She looked around. "I can't wait to see his face when he realizes that I'm already here."

  "What regiment does he serve in?"

  "Your own—the 24th Foot."

  "Then I must know him," he said.

  "I'm sure that you do, Captain."

  "May I ask his name?"

  "Of course. It's—" She broke off abruptly as a newcomer sauntered into the room. "There he is!" she said, joyously.

  Picking her way through the crowd, Elizabeth Rainham went off to greet her betrothed and to receive a kiss on both gloved hands. Skoyles was filled with a sudden envy. During their brief conversation, Elizabeth has aroused more than his interest. Skoyles had felt the first stirrings of lust, only to discover that she was hopelessly beyond his reach. The man she had sailed an enormous distance to be with was none other than Major Harry Featherstone.

  "Lucky bastard!" said Skoyles.

  CHAPTER THREE

  June, 1777

  The flogging was carried out in full view of the regiment, formed up in hollow square. Drunkenness was a problem that bedeviled the British army, and punishments for offenders were stern. Every man in the ranks felt sorry for Private Roger Higgs, the latest scapegoat to be paraded in front of them to serve as a dire warning. They knew his story and understood his lapse only too well. When he appeared, there was a collective murmur of sympathy for him. Higgs was marched to the wooden triangle that had been set up and he stood there, shivering with fear, while his sentence was read out by the adjutant. Ordered to strip, he removed his shirt. As he was tied to the triangle, Higgs looked thin, pale, and defenseless.

  Captain Jamie Skoyles was forced to watch along with everyone else but—though he did not condone drunken behavior—he had never found flogging an edifying spectacle. At its best, it broke a man's spirit and rendered him unfit for duty for a length of time; at its worst, it flayed its victim to death. Skoyles hoped that Higgs would survive but it was open to doubt. The soldier was not robust. Even the hardiest of men had perished when their backs were cut to ribbons.

  The signal was given and a brawny drummer stepped forward to select a cat-o'-nine-tails from its green baize bag. Higgs did not dare to glance over his shoulder at the short whip. He simply tensed his body against the first stroke. When it came, it ripped open his skin and made him convulse wildly. Before the first yell had left his throat, the strands of twisted rope bit into his back again and set the blood running down it. Higgs struggled to get free but there was no escape. His ordeal had merely begun. Almost five dozen lashes were still to come, each one more agonizing than the last as it pierced his skin to the bone and found a fresh place to inflict torture.

  What made it worse for Higgs was that he suffered such pain and humiliation in front of his fellows. Others had got through their ordeal without yelling for mercy, but Higgs let out a cry of despair with each succeeding stroke. He was a blood-soaked skeleton, twisting and turning like a rag doll in a high wind. Standing beside the triangle, Tom Caffrey waited to help him, wondering how much life would be left in the man's body when the flogging ceased. The drummer had built up a rhythm now, striking the bare flesh at a steady and unvarying pace, making sure that no portion of his target was spared the sting of the cat-o'-nine-tails.

  When the flogger finally tired, a second man stood by to take over, choosing another whip and attacking Higgs's back with gusto. Some of the soldiers looked away, others kept hoping that someone would intercede on the victim's behalf, most of them vowed that they would never let themselves be flogged into delirium in front of the entire regiment. Skoyles looked across at Major Harry Featherstone, clearly relishing the occasion, his smile broadening as the sergeant major called out the strokes. When it was all over, when Higgs was left hanging there with his back dripping blood, and when Tom Caffrey moved in to help him, Featherstone was obviously disappointed. There would be no more pleasure for the major to take from another man's pain. Skoyles was appalled by the streak of cruelty that had been revealed.

  Harry Featherstone went down sharply in his estimation.

  After a series of reviews and festivities at
St. Johns on the Richelieu River, the army finally set sail on June 13. The Royal Standard was unfurled aboard the Thunderer, an ungainly vessel, and the makeshift armada made its way toward Lake Champlain with high hopes of a successful expedition. Their ultimate destination was Albany, the northern base of the American rebels, where they expected to be joined by an army dispatched up the Hudson River from New York City by Sir William Howe, commander in chief of British forces in America.

  When the two armies met, Burgoyne predicted, they would have split their enemy in two, creating a barrier between New England, the stronghold of the rebellion, and the rest of the colonies. It would, he felt, be the decisive blow needed to bring the conflict to an end. The capture of Albany depended on taking a series of intervening forts from rebel hands, and Burgoyne had no worries on that score. In Major General Phillips, he had a master of artillery, a man who had distinguished himself in the Seven Years War by achieving the almost impossible feat of bringing up his guns at a gallop.

  While the main army would travel with Burgoyne, a smaller force had been assembled in Montreal under Brigadier General Barry St. Leger. Its aim was to sail three hundred miles up the St. Lawrence River and across Lake Ontario before making its way toward Fort Stanwix by means of Lake Oneida and Wood Creek. The fort had been built on the bank of the Mohawk River in order to guard the portage from Wood Creek. Though renamed Fort Schuyler after General Philip Schuyler, the commander of the Northern Department of the Continental Army, it was still referred to by the British as Stanwix. They recognized no honor bestowed on a renegade general.

  St. Leger's orders were to head for Albany along the Mohawk Valley, a route of immense strategic importance since it was the gateway to the west. It was also Indian country, the home of the powerful Confederacy of the Six Nations that included the Mohawks, Iroquois, and Senecas, tribes that had fought with the British against the French in the past. Since almost half of his two-thousand-strong force consisted of Iroquois, St. Leger believed that he would have excellent guides and, in the event of resistance, a brutally effective fighting unit. Having closed off the rebels' western supply line, he intended to rendezvous with Burgoyne at Albany.